SAP and Cloud P2P Integration: Putting Compliance First

Compliance with business policies such as approved vendors, spending limits, approvals, etc., are well supported by leading P2P vendors, including Ariba, Coupa, Ivalua and many others. The improvements in adoption seen with easy-to-use solutions may, in fact, bring a greater degree of compliance. For example, companies may see improvements in the amount of spend that is truly pre-approved vs. having POs created after the fact simply to comply with “no PO, no pay” policies.

Companies that achieve good end-to-end business integration across the spend management process will see a huge upside in terms of improving visibility into their liabilities and a better ability to close the books in an accurate and timely way. Improved adoption reduces the paper involved in invoice and expense processing, providing visibility to spend pending approval and reducing cycle times. Truly integrated spend management provides more advanced capabilities.

Companies may want to review POs where the services should have been delivered but no invoice has been received, for example. Customers that choose to deploy a wider footprint from the P2P vendor may be able to realize a greater degree of business process integration and visibility “out of the box.” Whether this process integration is achieved within the P2P suite or through many touch points between the P2P solution and the ERP, the visibility that customers achieve from integrated spend management will prove helpful in managing liabilities and financial close.

Driving compliance through P2P is not just a question of routing, workflow and approvals within the e-procurement and invoicing toolset alone. It also requires tight coupling with back-end ERP – as well as other ERP business applications or best of breed solutions a company has deployed.